


for keeps

by softcorevulcan



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Character Study, Aziraphale is Thirsty, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Comfort, Intimacy, M/M, Paris - Freeform, Pre-Slash, Questioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 17:51:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19728718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softcorevulcan/pseuds/softcorevulcan
Summary: Aziraphale drags out his time with Crowley after they finish getting crepes in Paris. He doesn't want their time together to end.Or, it takes Aziraphale years longer to realize what he feels. But it's no surprise (at least, privately, to himself) that there's something about Crowley that makes sense. That's made sense for a long while. That makes him feel like for the moments in time when they happen upon each other, the world almost seems to fit.





	for keeps

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to this post (https://weatheredlaw.tumblr.com/post/186135058789/the-point-is-youre-you-and-thats-for-keeps ) for the rather relevant quote : "the point is, you’re you. and that’s for keeps." – Mary Oliver 
> 
> I may extend this short ficlet to a few other scenes. There's a whole myriad of dialogue and little bits I might add later. We'll see.
> 
> I'd like to imagine Aziraphale admires Crowley for the way he thinks and questions the world, even though Aziraphale tries to deny it to keep himself (and both of them) safe from the dangers that surely must come if Aziraphale did let himself consider those same thoughts. It's why it's safe with Crowley - their meetings are secret, and no one's supposed to know the things they wonder, except each other.

Aziraphale is elated when Crowley comes to save him. He often finds himself trying to extend their dates - or rather, their encounters, that’s the official name for it all. Their accidental crossings. Their time together.

This time it’s spent insisting they get something to drink as well, then some macaroons. And if that all involves breaking into currently empty mansions with exquisitely delicious treasures inside, abandoned because the related victims have fled, or died, well then, at least the wine isn’t going to waste. 

Aziraphale doesn’t intend to follow Crowley around, and usher him along, and press his hand against Crowley’s back possessively as they trapeze about Paris with Crowley’s bad (although admittedly miles better than Aziraphale’s) French being leaned on heavily for support. The angel doesn’t intend to ask Crowley for a place to stay the night, just until the city settles down a bit - seems dangerous to take a ship back over the channel now, in this kind of atmosphere.

Aziraphale finds himself falling into black silken sheets in a brothel, in a room Crowley’s carved out for himself - a place to stay - and the angel finds himself insisting they drink more, if only to distract himself. To distract them both. From the horrors outside, from the ineffability of it all, of not knowing what’s meant to be a good thing or a bad, or even any of their business. And to distract Crowley, in the unlikely hopes it will keep the demon from questioning why Aziraphale hasn’t left yet, why he’s still dragging this evening out. To keep Crowley from paying too close attention to the way the angel’s eyes keep raking over him, more ravenous for that sight than any food he’s eaten today. Aching to be closer, to touch and be held. A need more dearly felt than any wine drowning his thirst tonight, that reaching endless bottoms of bottles couldn’t satiate.

He gets Crowley to lie in bed beside him, gets his own silly shirt off - revolution colors - gets to feel the cool fabric of the bed and Crowley’s coat against him. Giggles, hears Crowley giggling, and they’re both a mess of silly limbs as they’re trying to mumble out things to each other. 

Things that seem like they could be awful important - but the both of them are too drunk (and all too willing to remain as such, to keep dull any thoughts of the bloodshed politics they’re utterly aware to be so close to). So close to inevitable history, so vividly aware of their own lack of understanding of what it is they’re meant to do with it all.

Aziraphale is meant to watch, meant to let humans do as they will. And maybe on occasion, meant to guide - if he can’t stomach just watching it, at least lending out a miracle or two. And what is Crowley meant for? To make it all worse? More atrocious, more vile - more evil? Does he even really need to try? Or is it more about getting the whole lot of them - all humans - into Hell, one way or another, and the particulars are someone else’s concern (Aziraphale’s).

It was evil - all of this place - before the sudden change in public sway was acted on. It was evil and led by people who had no business deserving their power from nothing. Now it was war. It’s always been war, with humans. 

Aziraphale’s meant to be in London right now. Maybe he’s meant to be observing the wave of colonization England’s been thoroughly into. Mostly, he’s just sick of not knowing what the plan ought to be. The long term one. The ineffable one. 

But by definition, it’s unknowable. 

Lying half on top of Crowley, he wants to stretch his fingers to pull at the hem of the demon’s shirt, so that he can slip his warm hands underneath to the skin. Maybe it would warm Crowley up. 

Not that Crowley isn’t warm - he certainly is in his large yellow eyes, looking adoringly at Aziraphale - and Aziraphale’s pretty helpless once that gaze starts in on him. Crowley probably, today, let the angel tempt _him_. 

But Aziraphale knows Crowley, for all of their personal history, is at heart what he started as - a wily snake. The demon of demons, in Aziraphale’s head, because he’s tempting as all get out. He could wiggle his hips, smile so sweet and so soft, looking like honey begging to be reached out and taken, his eyes capturing Aziraphale’s with all the hopes of some unknown better that might exist - that could exist. That somehow seems possible when Crowley’s with him, like this, all laid bare and seeming honest and fully himself, when it’s just the two of them. And the world suddenly feels as if within it, Crowley is really the person, the entity - is _Crowley_ \- that could really understand Aziraphale. That it’s them, on their own specific side, all alone in it, because no one else is ever going to really get _it._ No angel, no demon, no god, no human. 

No one is going to be able to grasp how Aziraphale feels, sometimes, except maybe - maybe Crowley. 

And Aziraphale is absolutely hopeless to resist that temptation to feel this, to hope this, when Crowley suddenly makes him feel it. Makes him bear it. And who even knows if the demon realizes he has this effect, at random, at all times, unbearably. And as much as Aziraphale would like to tell himself of sides, and duties, and Good and Evil, it feels impossible. It feels utterly impossible to deny that there’s something that connects the two of them, that feels thicker than blood and magma and the core of the Earth. 

And it’s a horrible precipice, looking over an abyss that never ends, when Aziraphale lets himself ever drift to wondering, if Crowley can feel it too.

Much easier to let himself stay drunk, right now. Much easier to slip into that plausible deniability, that when he’s looking at Crowley like everything he wants to devour, it’s simply being too dazed to explain why. Far gentler on himself, to convince his own mind he’s only desperate to trace circles against Crowley’s chest, because he’s whimsy and tipsy and simply indulging an instinct he doesn’t understand. Simply acting on some impulse that comes from nowhere, and means nothing, and is silly. Just like them giggling is silly. Like them rolling over each other and struggling to finish the hints of coherent thought and words they’re attempting to convey - it’s all silly.

It doesn’t have to mean anything. Crowley doesn’t have to think it does, doesn’t have to wonder. He can just buy that it’s silly. Revel in it being simple, and not something that has to be analyzed. 

Aziraphale can pretend it’s all just this. That this isn’t really a hint of things deeper, things that won’t go away and aren’t really just fleeting impulse at all. 

Yearning sort of things, that scare him sometimes at night when he forgets to make himself ignore them. A terrifying sort of thing, that makes him start to contemplate a question, or really many questions. That makes him start to feel like Crowley - like maybe he could find a way to understand why Crowley is the way he is. Why he asks what he asks, why the demon wonders if what God does is fair or right at all. 

But those thoughts lead no where good. Least of all for an Angel. It’s thinking like that, that probably dragged Crowley down to what he is now, to the side he’s on, to the thing he has to be forever. Evil. 

But Aziraphale can ignore and deny and pretend he has no time to dwell on it all he wants. The point still stands, he does - sometimes, a little - manage to see why Crowley questions it all. 

He needs another bottle of wine. And Crowley is all too happy to indulge him. 

This bed is nice. It smells like Crowley.

The demon sliding out from under his arm though - tumbling half to the ground in a mess then straightening, promising to acquire them more alcohol - is less so. Because Crowley is away, farther now, and oh that makes Aziraphale’s nerves alight with a need he finds insatiable. 

It’s unbearable and too much and quite awesome in it’s persistent intensity, and it’s absolutely begging to be near to Crowley again. Aziraphale can’t believe it’s taken him this long to come up with another reason to rendezvous with the demon - to steal another perfect evening together, perfect in it’s imperfectness, always too short. Because it’s always too short, their time together, even after all these years.

Because as vitally different as Crowley is - as the demon _is_ , mission and matters of belief both - Crowley feels like the only being in this universe that even marginally understands. That even has an inkling. The only person Aziraphale feels he’s being seen as his whole self.

If he _did_ question - not that he ever, seriously, would, because that would be a severe mistake - he thinks Crowley might be the only being that would not hold it against him, or use it to hurt him. Crowley would just let Aziraphale process his thoughts. 

Crowley believes in him. That is something you can’t find just anywhere. 

It’s here. 

Aziraphale would like to think, as harsh a line as he has to tow - as they both, really, have to tow - that maybe, hopefully, sometimes, he manages to make Crowley feel as if he belongs here as well. 

On Earth. 

With him. 

Belongs in existence. Belongs to exist. Exactly the way he is.

The silly, slithery, questioning Crowley that he is. The wonderful Crowley. The demon Aziraphale would gladly allow himself to be tempted by, again and again. 

Because here it’s safe. Here it’s Crowley, and Crowley would never hurt him. 

“’d never hurt you either,” Aziraphale mumbles to himself, with a tongue that’s only half cooperating, as Crowley yanks his clothes back into the right shape. The demon smiles over at him - that fond adoration again, those big warm heavy yellow eyes lighting Aziraphale up from all the way across the space of far-too-much between them. 

“I’ll be quick,” Crowley tugs open the door, sort of wobbly himself, and Aziraphale is already aching at the absence. 


End file.
